FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT NATIVITY SCENE - PAGE 2

The driver of the tractor-trailer that crushed the Nativity scene in Wind Gap early Saturday has been charged with driving at an unsafe speed. State police at Belfast said Artenio Mojica, 34, of Miami, Fla., faces $92.50 in fines and costs if he pleads guilty or is found guilty of the charge of driving too fast for the conditions. No plea has been entered yet at the office of District Justice Adrianne Masut of Wind Gap. Police this weekend said Mojica was traveling south on Route 512 when he failed to make the curve at the borough monument and his vehicle jackknifed.

Christmas spirit in the Bucks County Courthouse may be somewhat less than merry this season. Alas, it's because the creche will remain crated. Commissioner Andrew L. Warren said yesterday that he has no intentions of testing the constitutional issue of separation of church and state in the courts by setting up the Nativity scene in the courthouse. Warren has made that statement in the past and has then changed his mind, ordering maintenance workers to set up the creche. But the commissioner said that won't happen this year.

The Bucks County Courthouse Nativity scene will remain in the closet this winter as a result of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that prohibited the display of a creche on the lawn of a government building in Virginia. Commissioner Andrew L. Warren said the Virginia case would appear to clear up some confusion on whether Nativity scenes displayed in courthouses violate the constitutional provision of separation of church and state. "I guess this is definitive," said Warren. "We'll have the holiday celebration with non-religious displays."

A 22-year-old Bangor man attending a Catholic college in Wilkes-Barre is facing criminal charges for allegedly urinating on a public Nativity scene in the city's downtown. Nathan Strawn, a King's College student who graduated in 2005 from Bangor Area High School, was taken into custody around 2 a.m. Sunday by the Wilkes-Barre Police Department. Police said Strawn was charged with indecent exposure, desecration of venerated objects, open lewdness, public drunkenness and disorderly conduct.

Each Tuesday, whenever he attended his violin lesson across the street, 5-year-old Billy Finnegan would notice the Nativity scene in front of St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church on Allentown's S. Fifth Street. But one day the Allentown boy's mother told him that the Nativity scene -- a German creche that has been displayed in front of the church every Christmas for the past 47 years -- had been stolen. So Finnegan started his own effort to raise money for a replacement, his mother, Lynn, recalled, giving the church secretary 50 cents he had taken from his piggy bank.

Call it a tale of two cities. One is an affluent suburb of Detroit, the other a steel town in eastern Pennsylvania. For all their differences, each has a tradition of putting up a Nativity scene in front of city hall each Christmas season. But this year it's different. Birmingham, Mich., has been enjoined by a federal judge from setting up a creche in front of its garland-decorated, Tudor-style city hall. In Bethlehem, city officials are watching with a casual eye as civil libertarians, citizens groups and municipal boards in towns and villages across the nation engage in legal battles that will determine the fate of this essential Christmas symbol.

On Monday, Janet Hodick begins trying to save Christmas for the townspeople of Wind Gap. Or at least that's what it will feel like. That's when the Palmer Township artist begins using her trusty paintbrush to try to restore Wind Gap Nativity scene figures that through 48 years have survived horrid weather and fading paint, but perhaps not a skidding garbage truck. Kings' horses and kings' men wouldn't be able to piece together some of the Nativity scene kingsmen again, but Hodick is optimistic about returning the Mary and baby Jesus to past splendor in time for Christmas Eve. "I'm going to give it my all and make it as good as possible," said Hodick, who will get help from Martins Creek artist and substitute teacher Jenny Leggett.

Sometimes listening to Christmas carols, other times listening to Carole King, the artists in the cavernous aircraft hangar tried to make sense of the plywood jigsaw puzzle at their feet. Morning, afternoon and night, they painted replacements for nearly half-century-old Nativity scene figures amputated earlier in the month by a skidding garbage truck. Thirty-three hours of work later, they hoped to put the merry back into Christmas for heartbroken Wind Gap residents. "We're happy with it," said Janet Hodick, one of a trio of artists who worked to replace Wind Gap's crushed creche.

A German creche that has been on display in front of St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church in Allentown for 47 Christmases is missing. And the congregation is offering $1,000 to have it returned unharmed. Depicting the scene of Christ's birth, the foot-tall figures from Oberammergau, Germany, were in a glass display case near the church's front door along S. Fifth Street. "They're going to be irreplaceable, I'm sure," said the Rev. Lyn Langkamer, senior pastor. The creche was donated to the church by Betty and Edward Leh in December 1955, the pastor said.

The Rev. Raymond Malec loves living in Bethlehem. "Where else can you have Christmas creches on display all year round and not have people bat an eye?" he asks. Malec and his wife, Bethlehem funeral director Jane Pearson, do just that. At any given time, approximately half of their collection of 120 creches is displayed in their home. This doesn't mean there isn't walking-around room in their tastefully appointed living quarters -- many are on view behind glass-enclosed cabinet doors and several are extremely small.